NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says.
The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response.
Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe, North America, Turkey or islands under the jurisdiction of any of the parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer could trigger Article 5, Lee wrote.
Photo: Reuters
That means China could trigger Article 5 by launching a missile attack on military facilities in the continental US, an unlikely situation that has nevertheless occurred in several recent war games held by the Center for a New American Security, he said.
In one scenario, China detonates a nuclear weapon over California, he added.
A direct attack by Beijing on the continental US would certainly draw NATO into a conflict over Taiwan, up to and including the defense of Taiwan proper, Lee said.
A far more likely scenario is that the fighting would spill out of the first island chain to US bases in Hawaii, a US state with ambiguous status under the treaty, he said.
The NATO secretariat in 1965 issued a legal opinion saying that Articles 5 and 6 do not apply to Hawaii, as it became a part of the US as a “state” and not a “territory,” but Lee said that opinion was debatable, as Article 6 does not exclude US states, and presumably “territory” would apply to US states.
However, US domestic law defines “North American area” as including the US and its territories, which would include Hawaii and Guam, which former British minister of state for Europe and the Americas Alan Duncan in 2017 said apply under the treaty, Lee said.
As such, an attack on Hawaii would draw NATO members into a US-China conflict over Taiwan should hostilities escape the confines of the Taiwan Strait and the Philippines, he said.
Should such an attack trigger Article 5, the scope of NATO actions would likely fall short of an obligation for members to fight in the Indo-Pacific region, as the purpose of Article 5 is “to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area,” he said.
NATO forces would most likely be required to take over defensive missions as US forces redeploy to the region from the North Atlantic, where the threat of Russian aggression, especially probing attacks against Baltic states, is expected to rise, Lee said.
The scale of such a military commitment would require significant troops and resources not seen since NATO mobilized during the Korean War to bolster Europe’s defenses against potential aggression from the Soviet Union, he said.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its